Filled with the power of love and the beauty of nature, Heidi is a lyrical tale about a little girl sent to live in the mountains of the Swiss Alps with her grandfather. A grumpy recluse, her grandfat
Featured title in the 2018 PBS Great American ReadsLiving in a squalid room in St. Petersburg, the indigent but proud Rodion Raskolnikov believes he is above society. Obsessed with the idea of breakin
In exploring everyday life and its intersections with death, this enduring collection of stories offers a naturalistic depiction of the working class in early twentieth-century Dublin. Joyce masterful
The orphaned Mary Lennox is sullen, ill tempered, and unloved when she’s sent to live with her uncle, Archibald Craven. A man consumed by grief over the death of his wife, Archibald has allowed
Swept away by a cyclone from the Kansas prairies to the Land of Oz, Dorothy and her dog, Toto, must find their way home. Traveling to the Emerald City with a new band of friends—the Scarecrow, t
Dr. Henry Jekyll, fascinated by the dichotomy of good and evil, no longer wants to inhibit his dark side. He concocts a potion to create the alter ego of Mr. Edward Hyde. With the burden of evil place
Frederick Douglass’s celebrated memoir is among the most influential works of the nineteenth-century abolitionist movement in the United States. Beginning with his birth on a Maryland plantation
Obsessed with the secret of creation, Swiss scientist Dr. Victor Frankenstein cobbles together a body he’s determined to bring to life. And one fateful night, he does. When the creature opens hi
After her impoverished family sends her to live with her wealthy aunt and uncle at opulent Mansfield Park, Fanny Price finds her life forever changed by the aristocratic Bertrams and the city-dwelling
A sixteenth-century cryptogram spurs modern geologist Otto Liedenbrock to embark on the most remarkable human quest ever taken. With his nephew and guide, he leads the descent from a dormant Icelandic
Featured title on PBS’s The Great American Read in 2018Lemuel Gulliver, English surgeon turned ship captain, embarks on four fantastic voyages, each a clash with strange beings and cultures̵
Henry Fleming is a young private in the Union army during the American Civil War—a farm boy untested by battle.Faced with charging rebels, he flees. With his ideals shattered and his heart burde
As war rages between Venice and Turkey, Othello, a Moorish general in the Venetian army, is determined to lead his men to victory with his trusted ensign, Iago. But, after being passed up for a promot
After nine years fighting the Trojan War, the Greeks sense imminent defeat. The gods have cursed them with a plague; the Trojans have set their ships on fire; and their best warrior, the impenetrable
Young lawyer Jonathan Harker journeys to Transylvania to meet with the mysterious Count Dracula only to discover that his nobleman client is a vampire who is thirsty for new blood. After imprisoning H
On vacation in Grand Isle, Louisiana, a married woman falls in love with a charming, attentive young man. The relationship spurs Edna Pontellier to explore her longing for independence and creative fu
There’s only one way for Professor George Edward Challenger to prove that dinosaurs still roam the earth. He invites skeptical journalist Edward Malone to accompany him and a group of adventurer
Born into “the blessings of liberty in a free State,” Solomon Northup was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Bayou Boeuf region of Louisiana’s Red River Valley. Twelve Years a Sl
Fast-paced and suspenseful, The Last of the Mohicans follows an intrepid group of frontiersmen and Native Americans as they navigate the rugged terrain of both the landscape and their racial differenc
Swindled out of his inheritance, recently orphaned David Balfour finds himself kidnapped and aboard a slave ship bound for the Carolinas shortly after the Jacobite rising of 1745. A shipwreck leads to
Isolated from society in a tenement basement in St. Petersburg, a malicious former civil servant vents his resentments. In the rambling notes that follow, we are exposed to the inner turmoil of the Un
Pragmatic gambler Phileas Fogg has made a gentlemanly wager to the members of his exclusive club: that he can circle the world in just eighty days, right down to the minute. Fetching his newly appoint
It’s the perfect match—gentleman lawyer Newland Archer will marry young socialite May Welland. The marriage should be a source of pride for Newland, accustomed as he is to meeting the expe
After Hank Morgan of Hartford, Connecticut, takes a blow to the head, he inexplicably awakens in sixth-century Camelot. At first lost and confused, the time traveler soon realizes that he can use mode
John Clayton III, an orphan boy, comes of age in the western coastal jungles of Africa following the tragic deaths of his aristocratic parents. Raised in the ways of the apes by his adoptive mother, K
A caustic criticism of nearly every philosophic predecessor and a challenge of traditionally held views on right and wrong, Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil paved the way for modern ph
In this definitive collection of essays, including the poignant title essay “Self-Reliance,” Ralph Waldo Emerson expounds on the importance of trusting your soul, as well as divine provide
A metallic cylinder falls to earth, landing in the sands of Horsell Common, Surrey, generating curiosity and awe. But what’s inside soon induces only terror. The story that unfolds is a breathle
Hailed by Thomas Jefferson as “the best commentary on the principles of government which was ever written,” The Federalist Papers is a collection of eighty-five essays published by Founding Fathers Al
Once upon a time, there was a talking, walking, dancing piece of wood. His name was Pinocchio, the marionette created from an enchanted log by Tuscan woodcarver Geppetto.The miraculous puppet dreams o
Stephen Dedalus is an Irish Catholic son in a pious Dublin family when he chooses to shed the constraints of religion, abandon his social and familial obligations, and escape the limits of his country
Orphaned at birth to labor in a workhouse, Oliver Twist is barely ten when he flees for London. There he befriends young Jack Dawkins, who educates the innocent Oliver in the ways of survival. When Ja
A soul-searching reflection on spirituality, A. W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God has been regarded as a classic Christian work since its publication in 1948. Tozer, a beloved, self-taught pastor, i
Wronged by human and beast alike, White Fang has endured through brazen ferocity. An enemy of his kind, he is sold to a dogfighter who pits him against other canines to the death—until a Yukon g
After his ships and money are lost at sea, Antonio, a prominent Venetian merchant, cannot repay a loan to Shylock, the Jewish moneylender and long-suffering target of his ridicule. Antonio must rely o
A portrait of Colonel Pyncheon looms over his family in the house of the seven gables—an ominous reminder of the curse he left behind over a century ago.The shadow still falls over the New Engla
Sir Charles Baskerville is dead. His body was discovered on the grounds of his Devonshire estate, face frozen in fright, not far from the footprints of a large beast. The cause of death has been deter
In the dead gray cold of Starkfield, Massachusetts, farmer Ethan Frome is struggling to scrape out a living. His duties are to his wife, Zeena—an ungrateful, soul-sick hypochondriac as frigid as
Emma Bovary, daughter of an uneducated farmer and wife of a dull doctor in northern France, harbors a passion for everything beyond her grasp—sophistication, romance, love, and deliverance from
A celebration of individuality, diversity, and nonconformity, On Liberty still makes a persuasive argument for what John Stuart Mill believed to be humankind’s essential liberties: the freedoms
